Vietnam News Agency's Deputy General Director Lê Quốc Minh received the award for VNA's Factcheckvn, for social impact at TikTok Awards Vietnam 2020 Sunday night. — VNA/VNS Photo Tiến Lực

HCM CITY — Factcheckvn, a fact-checking channel launched by the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on TikTok, was honoured as an information channel with social impact at the TikTok Awards Vietnam 2020 ceremony held in HCM City on Sunday.

TikTok Awards Vietnam honour outstanding creators, trends and campaigns that have contributed to spreading positive messages to the community.

The TikTok account Factcheckvn forms part of the VNA’s fake news project that also includes an anti-fake news song in 15 languages and a training campaign for students.

In October, the project was named Best Project for News Literacy within the Asian Digital Media Awards 2020, organised by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

With creative and meaningful video clips, Factcheckvn amassed more than 66,000 followers shortly after its inception.

In his remarks at the awards ceremony, VNA Deputy General Director Lê Quốc Minh highlighted the significance of approaching the target audience of TikTok, aged from 13 to around 20, the future readers of the official press.

“It is the mission of the VNA to provide honest and accurate information,” he said.

According to Minh, Factcheckvn is the first-ever fact-checking channel of the Vietnamese press circle through social platforms, which, he said, has received a strong response from youngsters.

Since 2019, VNA has implemented a series of creative initiatives. For example, an anti-fake-news rap song was launched in April 2020. The song was first performed in Vietnamese and then translated into 14 other languages including English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German, Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Khmer, Lao and Arabic.

At the awards ceremony, VTV24 (@vtv24news) by Vietnam Television was named the information channel of the year.

The awards cover 11 categories, including the creator, campaign, music and artist of the year, among others. — VNS